sunshine snacked on
a little
morning
5 COLLAGE POEMS – J.I. Kleinberg
ONE POEM – A. Martine
Brown girl: you don’t get a plot twist. Your story’s been penned
with strokes as hollow as they are spiteful
ONE POEM – Ian C. Smith
For those who forego the languor of home ground, that lethal rapine of routine, the most compelling sound of the travelling life might be a ferry’s foghorn throughout the night
COMFORT FOODS // Tortang Talong — Sadia Pineda Hameed
I receive a call from my mother. It is to tell me a recipe for tortang talong, which she learnt last night in a dream.
ONE POEM – Emily Barker
A drunk girl came up to me in a club last week and told me, yet again, that I look exactly, no, exACtly–Sarah! Come over here! Doesn’t she look exACtly like our Hannah?
ONE POEM – Clifford Brooks
Vacant of leaves
and shell-wrapped gifts,
dad and I can see the sky.
ONE POEM – Linda M. Crate
the fox and i
shared one glance
i think about it all the time
ONE POEM – Jack B. Bedell
and as soon as I touched the freezer’s handle,
the tar wall behind it rippled.
ONE POEM – Maura Way
I’m ready for the ritual
where I get crowned a
crone.
ONE POEM – Ben von Jagow
While I sleep
pygmy elephants
journey across my bedroom floor.
ONE POEM – Anne Gill
In lattie we held martinis,
un-clobbered each other –
left our cats on the floor in nishta.
What Makes a Proper Yorkshire Brew? – Lucinda Maitra
Rather than a distant past we can simply overcome or attempt to forget, our relationship to the historical atrocities of violent imperialism is difficult and clearly far from over, despite attempts to suggest otherwise.
Feeling Myself – Dolly Church
When my body was made up of straight lines it felt boyish and uninteresting, and when those lines finally bent, they felt uncontrollable.
COMFORT FOODS // Mammaw’s Christmas Eve Chili Recipe – Parker Anderson
Every year, while the people who crowd around the Christmas Eve table might change, the chili is always just as delicious, and just as cheap to make.
An Argument with a Photographer: Thoughts on Autofiction – Alice Attlee
How would it be to find oneself reflected as “both handsome and unexceptional”, or find one’s back captured unawares from behind, “broad and fleshy, leathery with sun and age, and marked with numerous moles and scars”?
ONE POEM – Fran Root
Their guitars stand somewhere in an empty room on American soil
Dust spots in the sun settle on their strings
An interview with Claudia Knight
Born in the heart of the Black Country, Claudia Knight is predominantly a writer who is exploring the capabilities of her creativity after moving to London and discovering the freedom in taking more risks in life. Having discovered the endless possibilities when creating digital art, her bold yet simple pieces explore her relationship with herself, her body…
TWO POEMS – Paul McCarrick
The moon will not go down again,
street lights will be on forever and drive
electricity bills into walls with no seatbelts
ONE POEM – Anna Nightingale
when a father is a control bar
made of wood
and the strings snap
the puppets fall
ONE POEM – Lizz K
Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash Milk Crate Malady We stumble to your home, arms linked tripping over ourselves as we talk I’m guided through the front door and down the passage to your room A lone mattress on the hardwood floor A vinyl collection spilling out of green milk crates Quick thumbs roll a cigarette we take…
Killer (non)fictions: Is true crime miscommunicating truths in favour of entertaining audiences? – C.S. Barnes
C.S. Barnes is a Worcester-based author and academic. She lectures in Creative Writing and English literature at various universities around the West Midlands, and her research background lies in representations of women in crime fiction. She also writes fiction and her work is published by Bloodhound Books. . True crime, by its very titling, leads…
TWO POEMS – Sara Nesbitt Gibbons
Their heads out, curved eyes on us,
reciprocating the salty, convex cabin.
Look, there, beautiful wooden bowling balls, said my mum.
SHORT STORY – Tamara Lazaroff
My grandfather who was not gay was born in 1930 in Seville, Andalusia. He worked as an itinerant labourer for the señoritos, the rich landlords, tending their olive trees and their domesticated animals.
THREE POEMS – Satya Dash
There are days when my body is a forest of old pines ailing and wailing in unison
COMFORT FOODS // Dissecting the Heart of Mandu – J.A. Pak
Dissecting the Heart of Mandu The Chinese, Mongolians, Japanese, and now the Americans and Europeans are in my food, but are the Turkic nomads there as well? Intriguing and exciting. A mandu (만두) is a Korean dumpling. A savory dumpling with a filling of meat. It’s usually boiled but it can also be steamed, pan-fried,…
A Corpus Stylistics Study of the Biased Narrative Voice in Jane Eyre – Yifan Zhai
Yifan Zhai is a young critic from Beijing. She is currently pursuing an MA in English Literature in Beihang University, China. She used to be in an exchange program to the St.Mary’s University of Texas, USA, where she developed an interest in studying and criticizing literature. Her focus is reading the classics with new…
TWO POEMS – Nick Chlopicki
the future is ready for
our, now available,
technological improvement
SHORT STORY – Valentina Cano
He was a black hole in a suit. An abyss in a necktie. And he sat down next to her on the train.
ONE POEM – María Paula Currás
I’m a mess
A profaner of tombs
Devoted to graves
Except mine.
ONE POEM – Yessica Klein
we kiss good-bye;
I wait for the kettle to boil. I am
happily waiting.
TWO POEMS – Steve Denehan
Pieces of me are escaping
through the pores
in the skin
of this room
ONE POEM – Lizz K
I sleep on the left side of the bed
so you can be on the right
the soft drum of your snore
signaling peaceful dreams
making me smile
ONE POEM – Ada Pelonia
yesterday blew
like a wind
TWO POEMS – Rachel Tanner
tell me the main differences between salt and nothing.
i will tell you the similarities. i will tell you i need both.
ONE POEM – Amy Lafrankie
A scream is trapped under my third rib where they perch on
like a perilous branch. I daydream of
You: hands on my throat
me: telling you I love you
FLASH FICTION – Judy Darley
Erin hesitates, watching. The old woman is there again, sitting on the swingset overlooking the valley
ONE POEM – Freya Zhang
You know the opposite of moonlight is a nest woven by darkness,
and you know your heart is a place where people ache,
where people no longer feed their birds on fire.
ONE POEM – Nora Selmani
what it would be like to be a skeleton.
what would happen if each dermal layer melted into the air
& my red stop light flesh went with it
without so much as a snap, crackle or pop?
FLASH FICTION – J.A. Pak
love is not you but a driving beat disguised in fast-moving glamour
ONE POEM – Julien Chatel
You make a landscape with tiny things
Turn late-night buns into morning seas
TWO POEMS – Penney Knightly
we are wrestling for the same
hooks in time
we are bitter catches
broken holed and punchy
ART: THE INK SAID – Gabrielle Turner
My inkscapes explore the transition between boundaries and intimacy; what it means to yield and to resist; to begin and end.
TWO POEMS – Jack William Mulvaney
Sadly, saw one dead cat
Cut down on pavement side
A few in lament stood over
Its lifeless body, white
Body Positivity and Fat Acceptance – Changing the World to Suit Personal Grievances? – Catherine Drysdale
I originally wanted to write an article about how different diets suit different people, and how breaking away from my father’s belief in the Atkins diet and doing my own research was liberating for me. I had hoped that those reading this article would find a similarly freeing effect, and it would give them hope…
